Teilhard then moved this insight forward. As the balance of tangential energy
in any given entity grew larger, he noticed that it developed naturally in the
direction of consciousness. An increase in consciousness was accompanied by an
increase in the overall complexity of the organism. Teilhard called this the
"law of complexity consciousness," which stated that increasing complexity is
accompanied by increased consciousness.

Teilhard wrote, "The living world is constituted by consciousness clothed in
flesh and bone." He argued that the primary vehicle for increasing complexity
consciousness among living organisms was the nervous system. The informational
wiring of a being, he argued - whether of neurons or electronics - gives birth
to consciousness. As the diversification of nervous connections increases,
evolution is led toward greater consciousness.

As Abraham points out, Teilhard's complexity-consciousness law is the same as
what we now think of as the neural net. "We now know from neural-net technology
that when there are more connections between points in a system, and there is
greater strength between these connections, there will be sudden leaps in
intelligence, where intelligence is defined as success rate in performing a
task." If one accepts this power of connections, then the planetary
neural-network of the Internet is fertile soil for the emergence of a global
intelligence.

Teilhard went on to argue that there have been three major phases in the
evolutionary process. The first significant phase started when life was born
from the development of the biosphere. The second began at the end of the
Tertiary period, when humans emerged along with self-reflective thinking. And
once thinking humans began communicating around the world, along came the third
phase. This was Teilhard's "thinking layer" of the biosphere, called the
noosphere (from the Greek noo, for mind). Though small and scattered at first,
the noosphere has continued to grow over time, particularly during the age of
electronics. Teilhard described the noosphere on Earth as a crystallization: "A
glow rippled outward from the first spark of conscious reflection. The point of
ignition grows larger. The fire spreads in ever-widening circles, he wrote,
"till finally the whole planet is covered with incandescence."

His picture of the noosphere as a thinking membrane covering the planet was
almost biological - it was a globe clothing itself with a brain. Teilhard wrote
that the noosphere "results from the combined action of two curvatures - the
roundness of the earth and the cosmic convergence of the mind."

Marshall McLuhan was drawn to the concept of the noosphere. Teilhard's
description of this electromagnetic phenomenon became a touchstone for
McLuhan's theories of the global "electric culture." In The Gutenberg Galaxy,
McLuhan quotes Teilhard: "What, in fact, do we see happening in the modern
paroxysm? It has been stated over and over again. Through the discovery
yesterday of the railway, the motor car and the aeroplane, the physical
influence of each man, formerly restricted to a few miles, now extends to
hundreds of leagues or more. Better still: thanks to the prodigious biological
event represented by the discovery of electromagnetic waves, each individual
finds himself henceforth (actively and passively) simultaneously present, over
land and sea, in every corner of the earth." This simultaneous quality, McLuhan
believed, "provides our lives again with a tribal base." But this time around,
the tribe comes together on a global playing field.

We stand today at the beginning of Teilhard's third phase of evolution, the
moment at which the world is covered with the incandescent glow of
consciousness. Teilhard characterized this as "evolution becoming conscious of
itself." The Net, that great collectivizer of minds, is the primary tool for
our emergence into the third phase. "With cyberspace, we are, in effect,
hard-wiring the collective consciousness," says Barlow.

In introducing the idea of tangential energy - the energy of consciousness - as
a primary factor in evolution, Teilhard opened the door for a new level of
meaning. The history of the world, he wrote, "would thus appear no longer as an
interlocking succession of structural types replacing one another, but as an
ascension of inner sap spreading out in a forest of consolidated instincts."
This could very well be what the Net is doing - consolidating our instincts -
so that consciousness can continue to
develop.